Since 2006, Vesconite Bearings has supplied planter parts to a diverse range of customers, including OEMs, part suppliers to OEMs, and individual planter owners.
Vesconite Bearings maintains direct supply relationships with several planter OEMs in South Africa and North America. The company is also expanding its footprint in Europe, with planter bearing trials currently underway at manufacturers in Italy, Spain, and Turkey. Meanwhile, VesArg has established itself as a highly successful partner in Argentina, providing planter bushings to many well-known agricultural equipment brands.
The bushings supplied by Vesconite Bearings and its distributors are used widely in modern planters. This includes on parallel linkage and depth control arms, seed and fertiliser coulter arms, and both open and closure wheel arms. These components are subject to some of the toughest conditions on the farm, including abrasive soils, wet environments, and heavy workloads.
Vesconite bushings are valued for their durability, maintaining performance over multiple planting seasons without seizing, and for their ability to support precise seed placement under challenging conditions.
Seed placement is a critical factor in achieving uniform crop emergence and optimal yields. Simulations and field data on some of the newest planters fitted with Vesconite bushings consistently demonstrate seed placement at or near 100%, even at high speeds and on more challenging crops. While Vesconite bushings provide reliable performance on crops that are relatively easy to plant, such as maize, their ability to support accurate and skip-free placement of crops like sunflowers is particularly noteworthy.
Clients report impressive service lives for Vesconite planter bushings. Several farmers have planted 3,000 to 3,500 hectares per season over multiple years without experiencing bearing failure and without lubricating. One long-term client in Argentina reported nine consecutive seasons of soya bean planting, achieving full productivity with the addition of only a small amount of lubrication to the bushings at the start of each season. Such results highlight the material’s ability to maintain both reliability and precision over extended periods, even under demanding agricultural conditions and especially where some lubrication is applied.
“Vesconite bushings provide benefits for modern planters,” says Vesconite Bearings CEO Dr Jean-Patrick Leger. “Our material delivers consistent performance, supports precise seed placement, and endures the toughest operating conditions. The milestone of supplying planter parts over almost 20 years is a testament to the trust our clients place in our products and the ongoing collaboration with our distributors and OEM partners worldwide.”
Vesconite Bearings continues to invest in research and development to support the evolving needs of the agricultural sector. One of its key advantages is that it custom-makes bearings for OEMs, so that they do not have to design their machinery around the off-the-shelf bearings that are supplied by other bearing suppliers.
